Pro-independence groups yesterday condemned Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) statement last week urging president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to accept the “one China” principle, saying Wang’s remarks reflects Beijing’s goal of ultimate unification.
The groups issued a joint statement saying that although Tsai has repeatedly said that she would maintain the cross-strait “status quo” based on the Republic of China’s (ROC) constitutional and political institutions, China should not forget that Tsai’s call is contingent on Taiwan’s democracy and public opinion being respected.
The Taiwan Society said that the results of the Jan. 16 presidential and legislative elections show that Taiwanese have firmly chosen the Democratic Progressive Party — whose platform includes “Taiwanese independence” — to take over both executive and legislative powers.
“It is clear that Taiwanese are supportive of the idea of establishing Taiwan as an independent country. The non-governmental forces pushing for a new Taiwanese constitution are strong and getting stronger,” it said.
However, the group lauded Wang’s remarks, made at a Center for Strategic and International Studies forum in Washington on Thursday last week, referring to the ROC Constitution as “their constitution,” saying it means China acknowledges that Taiwan has “its own constitution.”
Beijing should respect popular opinion in Taiwan, recognize that Taiwan and China are two countries on opposite sides of the Taiwan Strait and let go of hostilities, it said.
In China, Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) said people should not misread the core message behind Wang’s statements about Taiwan’s constitution.
“We hope the public will not misread Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s remarks. The point I want to stress is that our policy has not changed,” Zhang said.
When asked about the impact of Tsai’s election as president on cross-strait relations, Wang said he hoped that Tsai “will pursue peaceful development of cross-strait relations and that she will accept the provision in Taiwan’s own Constitution that the mainland and Taiwan belong to one, the same China.”
Speaking at the National Museum of China while attending a ceremony marking the return of a severed Buddhist head to China, Zhang said China’s policy toward Taiwan has been “consistent, unequivocal, and well-known to all,” and the core message in Wang’s remarks is that “both sides belong to one China.”
Zhang said he had noticed that some media played up Wang’s omission of the so-called “1992 consensus,” but he said Chinese leaders, senior officials and academics all mention “the 1992 consensus” when referring to cross-strait relations.
That is because it has been the path to ensure the peaceful development of cross-strait relations since 2008 and the basis on which many fruitful results were built, he said.
Not having this foundation will have a tremendous impact on the cross-strait “status quo” and peaceful development of cross-strait relations, Zhang said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater